Every now and then I hear a song that feels destined for a movie soundtrack. Something catchy, unobjectionable, with a theme clear enough to fit nicely with a scene but vague enough to be adaptable. You’ll notice it in the background as the action plays out, maybe bob your head a little, idly wonder who wrote it, forget to check in the credits at the end, then walk out of the theater and never think of it again.

The songs on Pat LePoidevin’s Highway Houses provide entirely the opposite sort of experience. This is an album so thick with imagery that the songs write the movie for you, a vivid cross-Canada travelogue that plays in real time in your head. Opener “North” sets the scene: “Let’s get the kids in the van. Let’s get ready to go. I’m taking them up north for a while, man.” The song flickers rhythmically by at the rate of electrical poles outside car windows, and as it progresses the scene changes from the “horses working the snow” of the east coast to the mountains and wildfires of LePoidevin’s native British Columbia.

Title track “Highway Houses” describes the homes of everyone’s Canadian daydreams: “Highway houses are the ones… where kids play in he parking lots and the hockey rink out back. Oh, with the winter’s come father plugs in the van. And oh, with December’s end everything’s covered out back.” This sweet little ode to Canadiana takes a madrigal form, beginning with a single voice and adding others in steps, creating an ancient, echoing tone.

Highway Houses often rings with this solemn voice of winter. The music is simple and heartfelt, but not necessarily quiet: LePoidevin’s voice swells and even booms over his sometimes-fevered strumming. But winter isn’t always quiet either, and here we hear the crack of the ice and the howling of the wind as well as the soft crunch of snow. “Fire!” on the other hand bursts forth with the speed of a conflagration, then burns back before advancing again.

On Highway Houses Pat LePoidevin draws multilayered animations of Canada, his voice, his words, and his sound each a transparent sheet like those in the anatomy section of the World Book, a picture in itself, but still and incomplete. Together they become a full and moving whole, an rich, active tale for the ears and the imagination.

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Highway Houses is available on LP from Bridgeport Falls, or for download via Bandcamp.